It's Magic
by ekc293
Summary: "Really, Rick? A magic trick?" One-shot, slightly suggestive mature themes but nothing terribly explicit. Kind of fluffy. Future Caskett relationship with slight spoilers from 3x12.


Hi there! There will be a longer note at the bottom.  
><strong>Disclaimer<strong>: I don't own Castle. That is all.

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><p>"So, what exactly are you trying to do, again?"<p>

Rick and Kate were standing in Kate's apartment. Well, technically, Kate was sitting on her sofa in her living room while Rick was rummaging around in her kitchen.

"Just give me a minute," she heard him say, "I'll be right out."

That afternoon, Kate and her team had just closed a particularly challenging case. Actually, the case itself was easy to solve. A jilted lover taking revenge on her sweetheart because she thought he was cheating on her, what with all his secretive phone calls and "meetings" he refused to tell her about. The tragedy was that all those phone calls and meetings were made and scheduled to plan out how he was going to propose to her.

No, the problem wasn't in finding out who killed him. The problem was getting her to confess (or to keep her in questioning until they could get a positive match of the gun found in the suspect's apartment and the bullets found in the victim with ballistics).

Kate had spent an excruciating 5 hours in the interrogation room with the insufferable woman. Not only was she a murderer, they discovered, she was also incredibly rude. The woman had the nerve to hit on Castle while he was sitting next to Kate ("I mean, come on," she had said, pursing her lips while staring at Kate, "She's not even that pretty. You can totally do better..."). She ignored Kate when she spoke to her. This woman even had the audacity to ask Castle if Kate was this demanding in the bedroom.

He had almost lost it and verbally attacked the woman to defend his girlfriend when he felt Kate's hand clench into a fist on his thigh. When he realized how much this was woman was irritating her, he kept his mouth shut for her sake.

However, as soon as the ballistics came back as a match and the woman had been arrested and led out of the interrogation room, Rick leaned over, kissed her on the forehead, and told her that he loved her. Then he looked into Kate's exhausted eyes and said he was taking her out to dinner, no argument.

Which is how they ended up in her apartment.

She heard a crash from somewhere in the kitchen and made a move to get up.

"No!" Rick called, "it's okay. Everything's fine. Just... stay there."

She slowly settled herself back on the couch. She was getting anxious. After the day she had, she just wanted to be with Rick. She had had her authority, integrity, and femininity questioned multiple times in the past day. And while she knew she was strong, she was still only human. Perhaps it makes her seem needy or petty, but she just needed to know he loved her.

She sighed when Rick began to speak again.

"Aha!" He cried, "I found it!"

He finally walked around and sat next to her on the couch. In his hand was a deck of cards. He yanked the coffee table in front of the sofa closer to where they were sitting and fanned the red cards out on the table in front of them. Then he looked at her.

"Pick a card!"

There was a moment of awkward silence while Kate stared at the cards. "Really, Rick? A magic trick?"

He avoided her looking her in the eyes, suddenly feeling as though this was a terrible idea. "It's just... you had a really hard day. And you told me that one time during the Drake case that you loved magic when you were younger..." He trailed off.

She sighed. It was really hard to be exasperated with him when he was just trying to help her. Her eyes softened and her gaze drifted from Rick to the cards back on the table. She leaned forward and grabbed a card from the deck. She picked up the King of Hearts. She smiled at the man sitting in front of her. "What now?"

He smiled, happy she was going along with it. "Hold on to it," he said. Then he began shuffling the deck. "Tell me when to stop."

She waited a few seconds and told him to stop shuffling.

He held out the shuffled cards in his hand. "Please place your card on the deck, m'lady."

She did as he asked, and then he put the other half of the cards on top. Again, he fanned the deck out of the table in front of him, but amidst the red cards, there was a lone blue one.

"What's this?" he said theatrically. "A blue card?"

Kate watched as Rick separate the cards so that they formed two different piles, one with the blue card on top. He put the section with the blue card on top of the other pile to reform the deck. Rick lifted the blue card and showed it to her.

"Is this your card?"

It was, indeed, the King of Hearts.

Kate smiled and shook her head. Before he could register what she was doing, she grabbed the card from his hand. Holding it between her fingers, she rubbed against the card, revealing what she had known all along: two cards, one red card hidden behind the blue card.

She raised an eyebrow.

Rick turned a slight shade of pink as he reached out and grabbed the cards from between her fingers. "But... I just... and you were supposed to... wha... how did you know?"

"Ah, Rick. A magician never reveals her secrets. You should know that." She looked at his slightly heartbroken expression and immediately felt bad about ruining his trick. She decided to tell him the truth. "That was my grandfather's favorite card trick," she explained, "he would do that trick over and over again when I was a little girl. After he died, I figured out how he did it."

His expression became a little less hopeless as she explained, and disappeared completely a few moments later. He excitedly collected up the deck of cards again and began to shuffle them.

"Well," he said, still shuffling the deck, "I have another really cool trick I can..."

He stopped talking when Kate reached out and took the deck of cards from his hands. As usual, her touch sent an electric shock straight to his core.

"Actually, Rick." She said with a smirk, putting the cards down on the coffee table in front of them. "I think I have a better trick."

Kate slowly stood up and started to back away from him, watching to make sure his eyes never left her retreating figure.

"Although, I may need an assistant for this one." She looked directly in Rick's eyes as she toed off her lipstick red heels that she had been wearing. She left them right in the middle of her floor. Even as she was moving away from him, she could have sworn that she saw Rick's blue eyes become a shade darker.

"For my next trick..." Her hands moved up and around her back until she found the zipper of her little black dress.

"...I'm going to make my clothes..." she made a show of slowly pulling the zipper down, reveling in the sight of Rick's entranced stare the entire time.

When she finally slid the zipper down all the way, she let her dress slip off her shoulders into a pile on the floor around her ankles.

"...Disappear."

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><p>Oh... I am such a tease.<br>Seriously though... I don't write smut (I'm awkward and innocent, lol). Sorry.

Anyway... the trick I tried to describe can be seen here: http: / youtu. be / 2KrdBUFeFtY  
>... And I learned how to do it here, lol: http:  youtu. be / eJE80ctuZmo

I started writing this story like... 5 days ago and I ended up having major writer's block on trying to describe the magic trick. And yes... I do see how that's ironic (a writer having trouble describing "magic")  
>I'm sorry it's so shorttook forever for me to get it to you.

As always... **Love it? Hate it? Let me know what you think! (:**


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